Though Thomas didn’t realize it at the time, in January 1999 an assignment by Environment News Service resulted in his biggest story ever when “Mystery Contrails May Be Modifying Weather” was carried worldwide.In February of that year, the investigative reporter first appeared on Art Bell’s radio program. The story of a phenomenon Thomas called “chemtrails” went viral as citizens across North America corroborated his findings. Seven subsequent chemtrails updates on Coast To Coast attracted such a large following, William Thomas was mentioned as one of Art Bell’s most popular guests in a Time magazine cover story on the famous radio host.More documentation followed. Produced by William Thomas in collaboration with B.C. artist Paul Grignon, “Mystery Lines In The Sky” was the first chemtrails video. Thomas’ Chemtrails Conundrum was the first published book on this covert program. The subsequently updated Chemtrails Confirmed has been fully revised and is now available as a downloadable multi-media ebook and DVD.Then came 9/11. Appearing in December 2001, Thomas’ deconstruction of official mythology was the first published account of Black Tuesday. All Fall Down: The Politics of Terror and Mass Persuasion was followed in 2008 by Days Of Deception: Ground Zero And Beyond. Though this updated book reads like a thriller, it comes complete with extensive documentation....In this pivotal year of truth and transition, be sure to attend the August 17 opening of the “2012 Consciousness Beyond Chemtrails” conference in Los Angeles. Hear William Thomas recount the highlights of his 12-year investigation into a story that has grown to nearly eight-million online links. Listen to the best documented evidence of the chemtrails cover-up by the award-winning reporter who broke the story. And prepare to be surprised by his latest revelations.

I went to the conference and watched his presentation. It mostly consisted of very old information that had been debunked before, and a number of recording of phone conversations that were rather difficult to hear. For some reason the conference organizers did not upload his video, but here's a preview:

Afterwards I had a nice chat with Thomas. He was very polite. I pointed out an error in his presentation, where he had said contrails need temperatures of -70F to form, when really they need temperatures of -40F. I went home for lunch and looked up where he had originally made this mistake in his book when converting for Celsius to Fahrenheit, and forgetting to add 32. That afternoon I pointed out that he'd been using the incorrect figure for 12 years. He seemed a little thoughtful about this, even saying something like "If you get that wrong for twelve years, who knows what else might be wrong". He recounted how on the plane to Los Angeles he'd noted the outside temperature was -50F, and had thought that was a temperature at which contrails could not form.

We also discussed in some length the "ice budget" argument against contrails, which basically notes that it's impossible for anything other that contrails to create such long visible trails - because the vast majority of the ice in the contrail comes from the atmosphere itself. A "chemtrail" consisting of powder would quickly dissipate. The opposite of what most chemtrail theorist say. He seemed quite interested in it. He asked for my email so he could contact me later.

When I spoke with Mr Thomas, he struck me as very intelligent and reasonable, and it has been with some disappointment that he seems to have not addressed anything we discussed at the conference. As one of the original chemtrail promoters I think he bears particular responsibility for the propagation of the inaccuracies that allow it to continue.

So I invite Mr Thomas here to discuss his claims in a polite and science-based environment, here on this forum, in this thread. I don't have any contact information, but will try to contact him via his web-site registration contact.

Mr Thomas, what I want to know is if you will correct (or issue corrections for) the provably false statements on your web site, and on the various books and videos you have created or contributed to? Will you come here and allow us to politely point out where we think you are in error, and then engage in a civil discussion to determine the real facts?

If Mr. Thomas comes, I propose that we could forward our questions to Mick and allow him to choose them one at a time for discussion, to avoid overwhelming him and to focus closely on exhausting all reasoning for a singular subject before moving on to another.

I've emailed Mr Thomas at whatever email addresses I could find, most of which bounced. If anyone has what they think is a current address, I'd appreciate it if they could PM or email it to me metabunk@gmail.com

Contrails cannot form behind aircraft unless the atmosphere is very cold. As NASA explains: “Contrails only form at very high altitudes (usually above 8 kilometers) where the air is extremely cold (less than -70°F).”

Page 49:

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Remember that for normal contrails to form and linger, temperatures must be -70°F or lower, and humidity values must be 70% or higher at the flight altitudes of observed aircraft.

Contrails are human-induced clouds that usually form at very high altitudes (usually above 8 km - about 26,000 ft) where the air is extremely cold (less than -40ºC).

-40C is -40F, not -70F, as you and I discussed a year ago in Los Angeles.

Yet your original error has propagated across the internet in the last decade. As a Google search shows:

This as led to a widespread belief that contrails should be far less common than they are (as -70F is a rarely reached temperature at cruising altitudes). Just a month ago I heard Dane Wigington repeat the -70F error in a conference call. If he's checking the upper air temperatures above Shasta against this -70F, then it's not surprising that he's become convinced of unusual activity.

What I suggest is that you issue a correction on your web site, correct the error in your book, and if you have an email list of book purchasers, then send them a corrected pdf file,or at least a correction notice. I also suggest you specifically contact Dane to let him know.

Regardless of the merits of the chemtrail argument, allowing known errors to propagate does nobody any good.

Did anyone ever receive a contact back from William Thomas? I can tell you that to my knowledge he has never publicly posted on any message board or forum, ever. Others always did that sort of dirty work, he never had to learn that he told everyone the incorrect temperature for ordinary contrail formation.

Now,thirteen years later Dane Wigington is repeating his mistake but is spinning the tale to include an allegation that NOAA changed the data, even though the correct -40 degree figure was published in scientific papers in both German and English many years before NOAA was even created.

About the -40 degrees figure... It is a pretty rough and round figure for the upper bound (warmest) of the contrail-forming temperature range. About the only thing going for it is that it is the SAME figure in both the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperature scales.

Contrails only form at very high altitudes (usually above 8 km) where the air is extremely cold (less than -40 degrees C). Other clouds can form at a range of altitudes, from very close to the ground, such as fog, to very high off the ground, such as cirrus clouds.

Click to expand...

(The de-emphasis is mine.)

8 km is approximately 26250 feet where the pressure is about 356 hPa.

In the Schuman tables (in the bottom of that PDF), -40°C is just about the warmest temperature in the most favourable engine type (high by-pass) in the most favourable moisture conditions (100%, with respect to water) at the lower boundary for the altitude range of modern passenger air traffic, FL250 to FL450.

It would have been useful if the author had mentioned that the formation temperature depends of engine type, ambient pressure and ambient RH. Maybe Thomas, Carnicom and others would then have looked into the matter a bit further and not made these mistakes.

That NASA resource has a fair number of dead links and one circular link. Maybe I will contact them about it.

During the conference call, William Thomas claimed to be a journalist who was dedicated to offering confirmable documented evidence in his stories. http://globalskywatch.com/live/archive/2013-05-27,Will-Thomas.html#.UaYoCdKR8bA
When asked Monday, however, he admitted that all of his first articles which got "chemtrails" into public discourse were wrong to claim that ethylene dibromide EDB was a constituent of jet fuel. Further, he claimed to have had an analysis done of jet fuel. To my knowledge, he has never published such an analysis. Ten years have gone by and many many people still state with (false) certitude that EDB is part of jet fuel and is being "sprayed".

Mick . . . Your requests for clarification and corrections are on target . . . as a person sympathetic to speculation about chemtrails and geoengineering I think accuracy and disclosure are necessary for the proper debate environment to be encouraged . . .

On a recent radio show, Dane Wigington repeated the false claim that minimum contrail formation temperature was -70 degrees F. Hisclaim said that at one time NOAA had made such a statement, but that it had been removed and changed to -40 degrees F.http://globalskywatch.com/assets/mp3/gwradio/2013-07-06.mp3

We know this is not true, and indeed the documentary "Memphis Belle" made in 1943 displays and describes contrails being formed at -40 degrees F, aswell as contrails starting and stopping in response to varying atmospheric humidity conditions, even in level flight.

Do these people actually believe that one of the most well-known WWII documentaries would have been made stating the proper minimum formation temperature for contrails, then NOAA could have changed the temperature to -70 degrees F, then changed it back again? That beggars belief, and William Thomas could set the record straight if he liked. Whether he does or not, people who fall for Dane Wigington's misinformation and repeat it discredit themselves and their cohorts by doing so. They have both William Thomas and Dane Wigington to blame for it, plus their own lack of discernment.

About the -40 degrees figure... It is a pretty rough and round figure for the upper bound (warmest) of the contrail-forming temperature range. About the only thing going for it is that it is the SAME figure in both the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperature scales.

In the Schuman tables (in the bottom of that PDF), -40°C is just about the warmest temperature in the most favourable engine type (high by-pass) in the most favourable moisture conditions (100%, with respect to water) at the lower boundary for the altitude range of modern passenger air traffic, FL250 to FL450.

It would have been useful if the author had mentioned that the formation temperature depends of engine type, ambient pressure and ambient RH. Maybe Thomas, Carnicom and others would then have looked into the matter a bit further and not made these mistakes.

That NASA resource has a fair number of dead links and one circular link. Maybe I will contact them about it.

Click to expand...

Hi Ross or Jay

Could I just ask how formation temperature may be dependant on engine type? First of all I am in no way an engineer, I find the things incredibly dull that's why I have never learned to drive. Now as I understand it more efficient fuel combustion should increase the amount of water vapour (that's following CnH2n+2 +O2 = CO2 + H2O). So I can see more water vapour getting formed, but is there a change in temperature in the combustion chamber? Sorry if it sounds a stupid question.

Could I just ask how formation temperature may be dependant on engine type? First of all I am in no way an engineer, I find the things incredibly dull that's why I have never learned to drive. Now as I understand it more efficient fuel combustion should increase the amount of water vapour (that's following CnH2n+2 +O2 = CO2 + H2O). So I can see more water vapour getting formed, but is there a change in temperature in the combustion chamber? Sorry if it sounds a stupid question.

William Thomas quoted Thomas W. Schlatter, a now retired NOAA scientist, in the 2002 Earth Island Journal article, as saying a temp of -76F was needed for contrail formation. Here is what Schlatter has to say about that:

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Dear Stephen, thanks for writing. The statement ascribed to me in your email is false. In the Sep-Oct 2002 issue of Weatherwise, I addressed this question specifically. See below, extracted from my Weatherwise column.
Contrails will form readily at temperatures below -40 deg F (-40 deg C) whenever the humidity is sufficiently high. For some time I thought contrails would almost ALWAYS form
if the temperature is below -76 deg F (-60 deg C), but I was probably wrong. Read on for more details. If this doesn't answer your question adequately, let me know.

Tom Schlatter

A Clarification about the Relative Humidity of the Environment in Which Contrails Form
In my column on contrails and Achemtrails@ in the Jan/Feb 2000 issue, I stated that, "at temperatures lower than -60oC (-76oF), contrails almost always form, regardless of relative humidity. I attended a recent meeting on aviation meteorology in Portland, Oregon, and heard several papers on contrails. Some researchers debate the above statement. They say that, if the humidity is low, contrails may not form or they will be very short-lived. First, some background.
Everyone is familiar with relative humidity (RH), but probably not with its technical definition. RH is defined to be 100% when the exchange of water vapor molecules between the air and a flat surface of liquid water is constant, that is, as many H2O molecules are evaporating from the surface of water per unit time as are colliding with the surface from the air and joining with the molecules of the liquid. If the RH is less than 100%, more H2O molecules are leaving the liquid than arriving, and there is net evaporation.
There is an analogous definition for relative humidity with respect to a flat surface of ice (RHI). 100% RHI defines the condition in which there is equilibrium between the water vapor pressure and a surface of ice, that is, the number of water vapor molecules escaping from the ice surface per unit time is the same as the number from the air colliding with the surface and adhering to it.
At temperatures between 0oC (32oF) and -40oC (-40oF), both ice and liquid water can exist in the atmosphere, and so both RH and RHI have meaning in this temperature range. The following table gives the equilibrium vapor pressure over flat surfaces of liquid and ice at selected temperatures. The equilibrium vapor pressure is the partial pressure exerted by H2O molecules in air when the RH is 100% over liquid, and when the RHI is 100% over ice.
Equilibrium vapor pressure (millibars) as a function of temperature (T) in degrees Celsius
(Source: Smithsonian Meteorological Tables, 1966)
T (oC)
0O
-5o
-10o
-15o
-20o
-25o
-30o
-35o
-40o
Over Water
6.108
4.215
2.863
1.912
1.254
0.807
0.509
0.314
0.189
Over Ice
6.108
4.015
2.597
1.652
1.032
0.632
0.380
0.223
0.128
Ratio
1.00
1.05
1.10
1.16
1.22
1.28
1.34
1.41
1.48
The last row of the table gives the ratio of equilibrium vapor pressures. The significance of this ratio is that at -15oC, for example, when the RH is 100%, the RHI is 116%. At -30oC, if the RH is 100%, the RHI is 134%. In the range of vapor pressures between the equilibrium values for liquid and ice, ice crystals will grow, and liquid droplets will evaporate.
Natural cirrus (ice-crystal) clouds tend to form only when RH is near or slightly greater than 100%. For temperatures at which contrails form, this means that RHI will be 148% or more.
Measurements with research aircraft suggest that contrails will form whenever the air is colder than -40oC and the RHI is at least 70-80%. Contrails will persist from minutes to hours only if the RHI exceeds 100%. Thus there is a range of RHI at which contrails form but cirrus clouds do not. At sufficiently high values of RHI, contrails coexist with natural cirrus, but it is difficult to distinguish one from another, particularly in satellite images.
Dear Mr. Schlatter,
You were quoted in Earth Island Journal in 2002, by William Thomas, as saying that the formation of condensation trails requires temperatures of -76 F or below. Did you actually say that? If so, do you still support that figure?
Sincerely,
Stephen L. Funk